WORDS WORTH READING

Clarence PetersenCHICAGO TRIBUNE

''Is it wise to excise words that are unfair, biased, ugly, outdated, impertinent and impure? It is one thing to hold up the vision of a new Eden before us, quite another to expect us to leave our linguistic weapons at the door.''

From Grammar and Gender, by Dennis Baron

PETERSEN`S PAPERBACK PICKS

Dashiell Hammett: A Life. Diane Johnson

The Cinch. Richard Martins

The Meaning of the Constitution. Angela R. Holder

The Serpent and the Rainbow. Wade Davis

Table Money. Jimmy Breslin

Taking the Stand: The Testimony of Lt. Col. Oliver L. North; introduction by Daniel Schorr (Pocket Books, $4.95). At some point during Oliver North`s testimony before the House-Senate Select Committee, Senate chairman Daniel Inouye told Shorr he was undismayed by ''Olliemania'' because, Shorr reports, ''it would all look different in print than it looked on television.'' And so it may, if much of the public actually reads these 753 pages of transcript in this ''instant book.'' But the first printing of 775,000 copies suggests only that the publisher expects it to be bought. Shorr, who covered the hearings for public radio, offers little comfort here to any reader, with the exception of those who applauded North`s testimony about the role of late CIA director William Casey`s role. Shorr quotes with approval the remark of an unnamed fellow reporter that ''Magnetic North is not the same as True North,'' but he clearly believes the implications of North`s testimony--that Casey was a prime mover in the Iran-contra affair and in the formulation of a Reagan foreign policy based on covert action.

Bess W. Truman, by Margaret Truman (Jove, $4.50). This is not a book I was eager to read until I started it and found it to be more than a daughter`s tribute to her mother. It is a labor of love--refreshing in these days of one ''Mommy Dearest'' after another--but beyond that it`s the well-documented story, full of telling details, of a remarkable woman of the kind we hear little about these days: a woman of strength born of love and tragedy, a woman who devoted herself to her husband and family. Bess Truman did it without losing herself, and Harry, who never seemed to get over his luck in marrying her, returned her devotion. The story is largely his once it gets going, but Bess is never far from the stage, just as she was never far from Harry even when miles away. That this took place in another era is forcibly driven home not only by the big and familiar stories of the Truman years but also by the small details. While the Trumans lived at Blair House during White House repairs, only a lightweight latch on a screen door separated the first family from pedestrians on the sidewalk a few feet away. In 1950, it was not something the family worried about.

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Grammar and Gender, by Dennis Baron (Yale University Press, $9.95;

hardback $23.50). The ability to use language, Baron points out, is generally believed to have helped mankind to climb the evolutionary ladder. ''Whether it has helped womankind,'' he writes, ''is another matter altogether.'' In this brisk and lively history, he shows that English has never been gender-neutral, that in one way or another it has reflected the dominance of Adam over the borrowed rib that became Eve. Parallel languages--his and her vocabularies to match the towels--have thus been maintained to distinguish the discerning, dominant and manly from the frivolous, subservient and ladylike. Those traits, however they serve man, have not been his exclusive conceit or invention;

historically, they have been shared, even cherished, by women. Although success in reforming English through gender-neutral pronouns would yield some happy results--''everyone loves his grandmother'' would logically embrace granddaughters--repeated efforts have failed. ''Everyone loves nis

grandmother'' and ''hiser grandmother'' were proposed more than a century ago. But the victories claimed for Ms. and for jew as a verb suggest that reform is not impossible. As Baron argues, language does change, as do attitudes, and social factors pay a role in attitudes: ''We can hope that an increased awareness of our linguistic history will prevent the English language from repeating at least some of the mistakes of its last. More specifically we can hope that works about language . . . will acknowledge women`s position as a visible and independent linguistic partner in the creation and perpetuation of English and that Eve`s language will become for men and women not the muted words of servitude but the voice of authority.''